Monthly Archives: February 2010

Gordon Brown cracked a rather amusing joke during the Welsh Labour spring conference this afternoon. I can’t imagine he wrote it, of course, but here it goes.

“It has been a strange week,” he mused. “The only thing I haven’t been accused of recently is killing Archie Mitchell in Eastenders. For the press here: I promise you, I didn’t even lay a finger on him.”Read more

We’ve examined Briton’s greatest top 10 historical characters – as voted for by the British public – and no fewer than six were bullies, by our calculations. Gordon Brown can rest assured.

Meanwhile here are some letters we stumbled upon today: Can’t vouch for their authenticity.

To the National Bullying Helpline.

Dear Mrs Pratt,

I trust I can count on your discretion. I need your assistance because I am being bullied left, right and centre by powerful people.

Alistair Darling described me as “the forces of hell.” The Daily Telegraph called me “Mad Dog and McPoison”. Stephen Byers said I was “aggressive and hostile” while one blogger, Devil’s Kitchen, called me a “loathsome, lying…poisonous little moron.”

I feel really put upon. I’ve even had it in the neck from Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who called me the “slug on the milk bottle” and a “lately exploded pustule.”

Amid political uncertainty about the future of Crossrail – would either Labour or the Tories delay or axe the project? – news of job cuts at the group may not be the most positive sign.

This morning I heard about redundancies across the piste at Crossrail in recent days. A spokesman has now confirmed that Rob Holden, chief executive, has asked all team leaders to examine the potential for job cuts. “Directors are being asked to look at their teams going forward…to continue to offer value for money,” he said. Read more

Brown insisted he “never instructed” anyone to brief against his chancellor after Darling warned in 2008 that the world faced the worst recession for 60 years.

This raises an obvious question: did he do anything to stop the anti-Darling briefings? It is worth looking over the reports at that time as a reminder of how pointed the attacks were.

The implication wasn’t just that Brown was unhappy — it was that Brown was preparing to sack his Darling and replace him with Ed Balls. This surely should have prompted Brown to take action and make clear these briefings were false? No?

Anyway, the key piece seems to have been in the Mail on Sunday the day after the interview. “A furious Mr Brown phoned Mr Darling and ordered him to eat his words on TV, while allies of the Prime Minister said, Mr Darling should be sacked and his job given to Schools Secretary Ed Balls,” the piece stated. Here are the most forthright supporting quotes, which are notably from MPs, not aides:

One MP who is close to the Prime Minister said: ‘Alistair has got to go and his job must be given to Ed Balls. Ed is the cleverest person in the Cabinet and has the full confidence of the Prime Minister.

‘If anyone can get us out of this hole, Ed can. Alistair Darling’s comments are self-indulgent rubbish.’

A veteran Labour backbencher said: ‘This is obviously a farewell interview by Alistair. Everybody wants him to go. You may get away with one uncharismatic Scot at the top of the Government, but not two. It’s like a “who smiles first” contest.’

Will let you know later if more juicy facts emerge from the more detailed numbers.

(UPDATE: One interesting fact to emerge today is that Andrew Charalambous, the Tory candidate standing in Edmonton, gave £142,319 to his own campaign for advertising, printing and other campaigning…….)

Here is the list of all donors giving more than £200,000. Sorry for the glitch on Sir Nigel Doughty (top right) – he is the biggest giver of all in the period. Read more

See the FT’s interactive guide to the shadow cabinet and key Conservative party advisers, including details of who the major players listen to and where the connections lie. The graphic includes profiles written by your very own Westminster blogging team. Visit www.ft.com/tories

Never mind the allegations about Gordon Brown — he is a mouse compared with Lyndon Johnson, the king of political bullies. If you’ve not read it, I urge you to pick up Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, surely the best political biography ever written.

In one chapter, Caro describes LBJ interviewing staff while perched on the toilet, urinating in front of secretaries and occasionally unzipping “Jumbo” in front of his senate colleagues and hollering “have you ever seen anything as big as this?”

Brown himself hailed the book as “quite breathtaking”. I wanted to quote some Caro passages on LBJs abuse of junior staff, but sadly I’ve misplaced my copy at home. Instead I’ve harvested some choice extracts from the web, mainly relating to how he used to manhandle his fellow senators into submission. Read more

Just been looking at the fascinating civil service “people survey”, which asked 340,000 workers whether they had been bullied.

Around 7 per cent of Cabinet Office staff said they had “personally experienced bullying or harassment at work”. No breakdown of how many of them were working in Downing Street. But the self-described victims of bullying do say that “managers” in the organisation are most likely to be responsible. Read more

Cary Cooper, a patron of the National Bullying Helpline, resigned this morning at protest at the decision by Christine Pratt – its head – to go public on her allegations of bullying at 10 Downing Street.

I’ve just come off the phone from Mary O’Connor*, another patron, who has also just resigned within the last half an hour. Read more

Just ran into a Tory MP who believes that bullying prime ministers aren’t such a big deal.

“Eden was a terrible bully, I’m sure that Churchill was as well…and as for Gladstone, well, he had furious rages,” he ponders. “If you want to work in 10 Downing Street you should be able to withstand a bit of tough treatment now and again.” Read more

The answer is probably no. Without further proof I don’t believe this one. But a caller to LBC yesterday morning claimed that – while working at a lamination factory last year – he saw the prime minister in his anger hurl a tangerine into a machine. I’ve typed out a transcript below.

The potential damage from stories like this, which can be invented by almost anyone (the caller refused to say where the factory is, when the supposed visit was, etc) is that they fit into a pattern of behaviour which we now accept to be be broadly true. (This blog revealed Gordon’s alleged phone-throwing in early 2008). Thus they can only harm the PM’s reputation, fairly or unfairly. Read more

The first secretary was in spirited form on the BBC this morning. Andrew Marr hardly laid a glove on him. But Mandelson’s response to the tenor — if not the detail — of Andrew Rawnsely’s allegations over Gordon Brown’s rages can hardly be called a denial.

Mandelson basically accused David Cameron of not caring enough about politics to lose his temper as he admitted that Brown is “quite emotional” and “will get angry but chiefly with himself”. He said there was a degree of impatience. “But what would you like? Some kind of shrinking violet at the helm as we go through such choppy waters.” Read more

An extraordinary compilation of all the CCTV footage of the alleged killers of Mahmoud alMabhouh, the Hamas military commander. It is long but well worth watching. Note the narrators make no mention of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. The shots of the tennis players using secret communications devices show what a sophisticated operation it was. But the most memorable moment is surely the bald chap who pops into the loo only to emerge with a full head of hair.

The authors

Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kate Allen is a political correspondent for the FT. She joined the lobby team in October 2015, after two years as the FT's property correspondent. She previously spent a decade covering housing on various business magazines.